Just weeks away from Gemini Man, actor Will Smith is staying the course for more sci-fi and fantasy with Brilliance for Paramount Pictures. Deadline‘s Mike Fleming Jr. reports the Bad Boys For Life star will be partnering for a fourth time around with Akiva Goldsman to build a vehicle based on the current literary trilogy from author Marcus Sakey.
A new comic book universe is potentially on the horizon with the trades all reporting that Steven Paul acquired a majority stake in Atlas Comics. Paul’s SP Media Group will finance, co-produce and with Paramount Pictures in a first look development and distribution deal with Paramount Pictures announced out of Cannes on Thursday, along with word that the Ghost In The Shell producer has tapped Akiva Goldsman to oversee a writers’ room through his Weed Road Pictures banner.
Goldsman and Liefield are producing with Brooklyn Weaver, and with Weed Road’s Greg Lessans executive producing.
Take what you will from the current outlook of director Nikolaj Arcel’s new movie, The Dark Tower. It may not appear as optimistic as one would hope, as THR suggests, but that doesn’t appear to be hindering Sony Pictures TV any in its own advancement of a small screen carry-over.
The company, along with Media Rights Captial and Glen Mazzara (The Walking Dead) is reportedly eyeing a ten-to-thirteen episode first season with Mazzara serving as showrunner for a 2018 production launch. Aiming as a show seperate from the film save for some overlap, the series will focus on the origins of Roland the Gunslinger and The Man In Black by way of the fourth book in the series, Wizard Of Glass.
per StephenKing.com
Part IV of an epic quest. Roland the Gunslinger and his followers have to contend with a sentient monorail intent on killing itself and taking them with it. While seeking to return to the Path of the Beam that will lead them to the Dark Tower, Roland tells his friends a story about the tragic loss of his first love, Susan Delgado.
Said overlap could include appearances by three of the film’s cast: Idiris Elba as Roland, Dennis Haysbert who plays Roland’s father, and actor Tom Taylor as Roland’s son-like figure, Jake Chambers. Executive producing are Weed Road Pictures’s own Akiva Goldsman and president of production Gregory Lessans along with Imagine TV’s Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are also on board as executive producers while Mazzara scripts and oversees day-to-day operations.
“I’ve been a Stephen King fan for decades and the opportunity to adapt The Dark Tower as a TV series is a great honor,” Mazzara tells THR. “The events of The Gunslinger, Wizard & Glass, The Wind Through the Keyhole, and other tales need a long format to capture the complexity of Roland’s coming of age — how he became the Gunslinger, how Walter became the Man in Black, and how their rivalry cost Roland everything and everyone he ever loved. I could not be more excited to tell this story. It feels like being given the key to a treasure chest. And oh yeah, we’ll have billy-bumblers!”
Ryan Reynolds may be busy manifesting further greatness over at Fox with Atomic Blonde helmer David Leitch’s upcoming Marvel sequel, Deadpool 2. However, if all goes as planned, he may soon find himself at the center of another franchise by way of Paramount with screenwriter Akiva Goldsman making some more moves this week with his Weed Road production banner.
The word is he now has a two-year first look deal at the studio with a raft of items to possibly work on, including an adaptation of Rainbow Six, late author Tom Clancy’s 1998 publication centered on John Clark, the ex-Navy SEAL character who has apprared in at least two live-action films inspired by Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels. Reportedly with Ryan’s pivot to Amazon by way of actor John Krasinski’s upcoming TV series in the Ryan character comes potential in a new action hero franchise for Paramount.
A partial description of the novel reads as follows from the official Tom Clancy website:
Newly named the head of an international task force dedicated to combating terrorism, Clark is looking forward to getting his teeth into a new mission, but the opportunities start coming thicker and faster than anyone could have expected: an incident at a Swiss bank, the kidnapping of an international trader in Germany, a terrible raid on an amusement park in Spain.
Each episode seems separate, discrete, yet the timing disturbs Clark. Is there a connection? Is he being tested? With the help of his close associates, executive officer Alistair Stanley and strike team leaders Domingo Chavez and Peter Covington, Clark tries to figure out where all this activity is heading, but there is no way to predict the real threat: a group of terrorists like none the world has ever encountered, a band of men and women so extreme that their success could literally mean the end of life on this earth as we know it.
Beverly Andre Nemec and Josh Applebaum are penning the script with Goldsman to produce should current loose discussions between all parties solidify, and with a possible follow-up in John Clark origin adaptation, Without Remorse at that. Goldsman is also in the mix to direct Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld’s comic creation, Avengelyne, in addition to hatching a writers’ room to advance the Ologies YA novel series for Paramount after the IP fell through from Universal prior to beating out Fox for the rights, and leading development on several genre films budgeted from five-to-ten million dollars.
Reynolds’s next return to the big screen will be with actor Samuel L. Jackson in The Hitman’s Bodyguard on August 25 from Lionsgate. (Deadline)
HOLLYWOOD, Calif., April 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Paramount Pictures and Hasbro, Inc. today unveiled its top talent writers room which will have responsibility for developing Hasbro’s cross-property interconnected onscreen universe featuring the brands G.I. Joe, Micronauts, Visionaries, M.A.S.K. (Mobile Armored Strike Kommand) and ROM. This group includes some of the most notable creative talent in Hollywood, including Academy Award Winner Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), who will have responsibility for overseeing the writers room on behalf of Hasbro and Paramount as well as serving as Executive Producer for all of the films. Joining Goldsman will be Lindsey Beer (Wizard of Oz, Kingkiller Chronicle), Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay), Cheo Coker (Luke Cage, Ray Donovan), Joe Robert Cole (Black Panther, People vs. OJ), Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Marvel), Jeff Pinkner (Lost, The Dark Tower), Nicole Riegel (Soldier Girls), Geneva Robertson (Atlantis, Tomb Raider) and Brian K Vaughan (Under the Dome, Lost).
It’s considerably awesome seeing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson become one of the most entertaining and bankable actors working in film these days. The Mummy Returns, The Scorpion King, and The Rundown were a huge jumpstart for the former wrestler whose move into film has since brought him in the throes of some of the biggest franchises to to date, including The Fast And The Furious saga and the G.I. Joe movies.
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